Sunday, March 2, 2014

A Few More Songs of Blades and Heroes

We’ve played a few more games of
A
Song of Blades and Heroes over the last week or so. One was before
the big Ronin
Campaign last weekend, and the other two were during this past week.
Here are a few quick reports of the action….

GAME ONE

We decided to introduce Amanda to the game. I tried to run
it as a sort of tabletop adventure. I gave Amanda and the kids each 100 points
(300 total) to select a force of “adventurers” to play a quick game with.
Finnegan took a Lizardman Champion, Amanda took an Elite Elf Archer and a
Halfling Archer, and Keira took two human archers and a human warrior (I
think…? It’s been over a week now, so I’m not entirely sure what they were all
classed as)

SITUATION

Our heroes were making game near
a marsh in a wilderness area when they suddenly realized they were surrounded
by Orcs!

SCENARIO

The Adventurers set up in the
center of the table. The orcs were set up witin one short stick of any edge of
the table.

(I think Keira hit the Ogre a
number of times here – but only ever managed to make it recoil…)

Another Orcs approaches the
ford.

More of them splash across the
shallow water.

TWANG-THWIP-THUD!Another orcs falls dead just as he
steps onto the far bank.

And then the Ogre went on a
rampage – he charged out of the river and into contact with one of the Elves!

The elf was struck down!!

Thre remaining three elves fell
back.

But the Ogre pressed forward and
struck down another elf…

Actually I’m not totally sure
what happened here. One was killed and antoher knocked down…? I seem to recall
there was a morale check made and the Elf leader fled off the table!?

Wow… I really expected the Elves
to do a whole lot better…

GAME THREE

On Saturday evening Rick stopped
by to play a game and we tried out A
Song of Blades and Heroes. Though I had an additional Dwarf Warband
prepared, we ended up using the same forces that Finnegan and Keira has used in
the previous game.

My trusty band of Elves…
faltering… The first Elite Elf Archer marched ahead but wasn’t quite close
enough to hit any of the Orcs. The second Elite Elf Archer tried to follow up
but rolled two failures and one success when dicing for activation!? ONE A 2+!?
So that was it for the Elves turn!?

The Orcs surrged towards the
ford on their turn.

THWIP-THUD! One Orc down!

THWIP-THUD! Another Orc down!

Rushing this ford is getting
costly…

One makes it across the ford…
and gets cut down by the Elves.

THWIP-THUD! Another Orc down on
the far side of the river!

And that is half strength… So
Rick tested Morale (I realized afterwards that this was a tad premature – it’s
not when a warband reaches 50% - it’s when there are more dead/fled than active
members that they check). Two orcs and the Ogre held fast…

But the Orc Boss suddenly
remembered he forgot something back at the… er… where was it …?

Pressing on on their next turn
another Orcs makes it across the ford – only to be cut down point blank by the
Elf leader

Now THIS is going how I kind of
expected the first game to go…

Only three left… but they are
bad news those ones…

The Ogre and Orc boss make it
across on their turn but don’t’ have enough actions to actually attack… so I
needed to be clever in my activations to make sure I can get multiple guys into
contact with the Ogre so we can gang up and take it down… then I roll ANOTHER
pair of ones on my first activation…

Seriously!?

SERIOUSLY!?

Luckily for me the the
absurdness didn’t end there… Rick started off his turn with a pair of failed
activations and it switched back to me…

Yeah, that could have goen very
poorly for me!

Instead I was able to gang up on
the Ogre and knock him down with one Powerful blow from the Elite Elf Archer
that stepped in.

And a second powerful blow from
the Elf Leader finished off the Ogre…

Okay… just two of them left… we
can do this…

Aaaaaand then the Orc Boss
smashed down one of the Elite Elf Archers!

Trading blows, knocking down
foes…

Finihsed off the last of the Orc
minions.

So it was just us and the Orc Leader…

And I neglected to take anymore
pictures after that!? There was a LOT of moving about as the Orc Boss
repeatedly charge in against one of the Elves or another… WE would try and gang
up on him… then he would recoil.. then it would start all over again… one time
we got lucky and doubled his score in a combat… but being Tough it only reduced
his quality… Which meant he didn’t get in any more powerful blows as he never
got more than two successes and had to use one to move in and the other to make
a regular attack…

We just couldn’t finish him off,
though… when we reduced him further to Q5+ Rick decided to pack it in as,
though it might take a while, it seemed pretty obvious we would eventually
whittle him down…

This game took a bit longer…
there was lots of dancing around, jockeying for position… but that’s what I
like about this! With other systems two guys move into combat and they stand
there going at it toe-to-toe for turns on end until someone finally gets lucky
and kills the other. With this there was a lot of movement as the Orc boss
charged in and then recoiled, then the elves moved to try and shoot him and
force him to charge the lower ranking archer – so the elite Archer or Leader
could activate and move in to help and already have one in the combat to outnumber
the Orc…

One thing I'm not so sure about is when Morale tests are taken - there's only a couple things that cause them to be taken - death of a leader and the moment when the warband has more dead and fled than active - and that's only taken once... after that... smooth sailing... My gut reaction is to say that once you reach that threashold (more dead and fled than active) you should test every time another member of the warband dies... Maybe we'll test that out for a few games (after getting in a few more games of the rules as written to get a better sense of how they're supposed to work!)

I'd like to get some sort of casualty figure/markers to show where figures have been cut down. I guess the Grim Reaper works okay... Or maybe the Ghosty figure I picked up a while back...?

I am quite keen to try a
campaign. I hope I can get Dave and Patrick and Christian (and maybe Curtis) to
get in on that action… Or maybe I’ll just start a little campaign with Amanda
and the kids…

You're doing Morale correctly - whenever there's a trigger for a morale test (leader dead, <50% alive, etc.), each figure takes a morale test immediately but just the once. If they don't run off the table or roll 3 failures (= destroyed), then they pull themselves back together and get on with it (usually the dying, that is...).

Nice to see I'm not the only one who lets his kids play with his toys! My little guy was so jealous to see all my kit in storage back in Nova Scotia. Have to let him have a game with me when we go back on a visit in 2 summers.